If you take this medication, your joints won’t hurt as bad. There are potential severe side effects like overwelming infections, depression, or bleeding, but if you don’t take the medicine your joints will be irrevsibly damaged. That will be your fault. So you should take the medicine. You should take this medicine for your diabetes. It may cause dementia, diarrhea or even heart attacks, but it you don’t you will have severe lifethreatening complication of diabetes. That would be your fault. So take the medicine. Sometimes, the medicine just allows you to do what you want. Take the purple pill and eat chicken wings and donuts. Heartburn will not be an issue. If you don’t take the medicine, you may get esophagus bleeding or even cancer because of the acid back-up. So take the medicine. If you don’t, those complications would be your fault. Side effects include osteoporosis, heart attacks, and liver failure. This is fear based medicine.
It seems obvious, that if you have diabetes, autoimmune arthritis, or gastroesophageal refux, that you should take the medications to cure the disease and prevents the complication of the disease.
The problem is that the diseases are not cured. They are “managed”. So you have to “manage” to take the medications the rest of your life. You will still be at risk for progression of your disease as well as the diseases or conditions caussed by the medications. Not to worry, most medications are covered by your insurance, at least in part, and the pharmaceutical company may have coupons for the first year. After that, you insurance company will negotiate with the pharmaceutical companies on a fair price and a brand that is suitible for you.
So if you don’t take the medications, the consequences are your fault. Most people accept that argument. Well, he got worse, but he didn’t take his medications correctly. We call that medical noncompliance. In fact, as many as 30% of prescriptions are not filled and as many as 50% are taken incorrectly. So it is your fault if you don’t take your medications. Physicians have no trouble telling their patients that. I told you to take your medications and now look at the mess we are in. But, what we as physician don’t want to tell you, is that lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, autoimmune diseases and gastroesophageal reflux are you fault to begin with. They are largely caused by your food choices. The accumulation of toxins and metabolic waste or accumulation of byproducts of digestion. For instance, there are 40 ingredients in a single chicken nugget that need to be handled by the body. The poisons add up.
It is not a blame game that you caused the disease or the consequence, but we, as physicians, cannot shoulder all of the failures that we experience to keep our patients healthy. After all, if you get into medical school, you had to get a lot of answers right along the way. We need to win or get the best grades. Having our patients fail at health is unacceptable.
So let’s make it easier on both of us. Eat a whole foods, plant based, nutrient dense diet and avoid these dreaded lifestyle diseases in the first place.
If you would like help, or would like to find out more about food as medicine, check out our website at http://doctordulaney.com
3 Comments
Janet
This is a great article, and so true! It takes me back to conversations with family members who take medications recommended by their doctor. They are told to take the medications to manage their condition, but they are never told that they are causing their condition in the first place by choosing to eat unhealthy, fat-laden food and choosing to follow an unhealthy lifestyle with little to no exercise!
Nancy Brainard
I agree that this is excellent. Such a shame that it almost seems like a secret. I listened to a podcast yesterday on the new and improved Canadian Food Guide. They even use the phrase plant based! There are still problems with the recommendations and recipes offered, but it is still more than what our country is doing. We need to clone Dr. Dulaney….and start getting educated ourselves. There are excellent research based resources our there! Hope many more Americans will wake up to fact that what we eat matters.
Laura Hoffman
Thank you Dr. Dulaney; this is a great post. It is so true. When the doctor wants to prescribe something and you are asking for another way – they cannot offer anything else. Thank you for telling us about the food!